As consumers in society we are constantly being bombarded with messages about what to buy, what to think, how to dress, how to look and how to behave. Every day advertisements not only sell us products but they also sell us ideas. These ideas influence how we think about the world, and how we construct decisions. Every day advertisers make contemplative decisions on what visuals, texts and sounds best represent a product. With this in mind, advertisements worldwide present unattainable images which creates numerous preconceived notions apparent in today’s society. For instance, when men look at pictures in ads that portray an idea of a woman’s beauty, they are unknowingly compelled into believing that they are seeing true beauty (Mary 5). This emphasis of true beauty, and expectation created by the consumer “can inhibit eating disorders and compulsive exercising in the future”(Mary 6) and negatively affect a woman's self-esteem and body image. Due to these provocative advertisements seen today, a standard for being an attractive woman has been created. Beyond natural or even attainable for most young women, this standard emotionally and physically confuses women about their bodies. However, through deconstruction, a media’s true message can be exposed; showing the values and biases of the media makers and uncovering the underlying powerful messages exploiting and creating body stereotypes for women.
As consumers, we are flooded by the inaccurate portrayals of what advertisers consider to be an ideal woman. Sony Ericsson, a multinational mobile phone manufacturing company, has used various techniques to display their new product, the C905 Cybershot, a high quality camera phone. These techniques connote numerous discourse, like c...
... middle of paper ...
... the buyer, that by purchasing said product you will prosper either socially, economically, emotionally, and or physically. The advertisement is the sole attempt to grab a consumer’s attention and sell the merchandise efficiently and effectively.
Work Cited
Hirschberg, Stuart, and Terry Hirschberg. "The Hook-Up Culture." Patterns across Cultures. Boston: Wadsworh/Cengage Learning, 2014. 53-61. Print.
June, Laura. "Sony Ericsson's New Ad Shows off the C905's Camera and Absolutely Nothing Else." Engadget. N.p., 2008. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1996. Print.
Slater, Amy, Marika Tiggemann, Bonny Firth, and Kimberley Hawkins. "REALITY CHECK: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE ADDITION OF WARMING LABELS TO FASHION MAGAZINE IMAGES ON WOMEN'S MOOD AND BODY DISSATISFACTION." Guilford Publincations, 2012. Print. 03 Dec. 2013.
First, Kilbourne’s research should be praised tremendously for bringing to light the unhealthy impression of true beauty in today’s culture. Kilbourne challenges the audience to reconsider their viewpoints on advertising that is sublime with sexual language. The evolution of advertising and product placement has drastically changed the real meaning of being a woman. According to the movie, every American is exposed to hundreds and thousands of advertisements each day. Furthermore, the picture of an “ideal women” in magazines, commercials, and billboards are a product of numerous computer retouching and cosmetics. Media creates a false and unrealistic sense of how women should be viewing themselves. Instead of being praised for their femininity and prowess, women are turned into objects. This can be detrimental to a society filled with girls that are brainwashed to strive to achieve this unrealistic look of beauty.
I have examined and analyzed the COVERGIRL™ NatureLuxe advertisement that uses common feminine stereotypes. In this advertisement, COVERGIRL™, which runs in Seventeen magazines, targets women through their choices of colors, fonts, and images used. Certain stereotypes are used; such as, those who are more feminine tend to prefer lighter, happier colors, such as pink. Also, the use of a celebrity, who many young women look to as an icon, assists in the advertisement of the COVERGIRL™ product. COVERGIRL™, more than likely, is able to successfully market their lip-gloss product in the United States by using common gender stereotypes to show femininity and how those, mainly women, should be presented in today’s society.
Advertisers use women that are abnormally thin, and even airbrush them to make them appear thinner. These advertisers promote a body image that is completely unrealistic and impossible to achieve (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006b). It has been instilled in these advertisers’ minds that a thinner model will sell more (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003). Media has a direc...
Media is a wide term that covers many information sources including, television, movies, advertisement, books, magazines, and the internet. It is from this wide variety of information that women receive cues about how they should look. The accepted body shape and has been an issue affecting the population probably since the invention of mirrors but the invention of mass media spread it even further. Advertisements have been a particularly potent media influence on women’s body image, which is the subjective idea of one's own physical appearance established by observation and by noting the reactions of others. In the case of media, it acts as a super peer that reflects the ideals of a whole society. Think of all the corsets, girdles, cosmetics, hair straighteners, hair curlers, weight gain pills, and diet pills that have been marketed over the years. The attack on the female form is a marketing technique for certain industries. According to Sharlene Nag...
Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, discusses the idea that the businesses of advertising and commercialism have promoted specific body ideals for women in our modern day society by the methods in which they market towards their target audiences, specifically how women are portrayed in their ads. Throughout the documentary, Kilbourne is extremely critical of the advertising industry, accusing it of misconduct. She argues that objectification and superficial, unreal portrayal of women in these advertisements consequently lower women’s self-esteem. Ordinarily, women have many industries that try to gear their products towards them with apparel, beauty, and toiletries being amongst the most prominent. The majority of advertisements
“Ads sell more than products. They sell values, they sell images, they sell concepts of love and sexuality, of success, and perhaps most important, normality.” Jean Kilbourne, a media critic, goes into great detail of this disgrace to modern society in her documentary, “Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising 's Image of Women.” Many people like Kilbourne could argue that women have falsely been depicted as a minority to men over the years. All different forms of advertising have been guilty of womanizing in this way at one time or another. Some of the largest companies have been caught displaying woman in a sexual and desirable way in order to sell products; some even make the woman seem weak or dependable on a male figure. While many companies are guilty of the form of advertisement described in Kilbourne’s video, a handful of corporations bring hope into our often sexist society. One particular Nike ad contradicts Kilbourne’s theory of worsening feminization by showing a ruthless, successful female athlete. However, when analyzed, an Old Spice ad suggests that women are subjective to men, proving Kilbourne’s theory to have some truth.
After analysing and comparing both media sources, it is clear that the perspectives, language and images of the media texts, play a major role in reflecting its purpose to the viewers. Although both media texts serve totally different purposes, there are still some similarities relating to their topic “blushing beauty” and Body dissatisfaction. In conjunction with the media tools, it is clear that over time the media has become more and more provocative. This also makes it clear that, the pressure to achieve an unrealistic "body ideal" is now an underlying cause of serious health and relationship problems. However, to avoid body dissatisfaction from spreading further in society, cosmetic advertisements must use more realistic images.
Media is different forms of communication, such as radio, newspapers, and television, that are directed to mass audiences. Kilbourne’s presentation explores how media, specifically advertisements, have unrealistic and unhealthy perceptions of beauty, perfection and sexuality.
In modern society there is more and more digital editing without the knowledge of consumers. Currently there are various reasons for why women develop negative body image, low-self-esteem and eating disorders. According to Naomi Wolf in her novel “Beauty Myth”, one of the many reasons women obtain concerns with their bodies is due to the universal images of young female bodies presented through advertisements in fashion magazines. Advertisements in magazines are altering and shaping the desires of men and women. Magazines sell viewers images of beautiful, skinny, flawless confident young women. When people are constantly antagonized with the magazine industry’s ideal of “perfect beauty” the viewer’s then, subconsciously believe these images to be true and begin to form biases about what they themselves should look like and what other people must also look like. People who view magazines get mislead by advertisers because they are unaware that all the images displayed are digitally altered through Photoshop and airbrushing. Today’s magazines are formed completely on false ideals of flawless beauty and unattainable body images, to prevent women and men from falling victim to the magazine’s deceitful images we as a society need to become aware and educate ourselves.
From the moment we wake up in the morning media is at our finger tips. As our day goes on we cannot escape all the visual media. One image after another a person’s self-confidence is either boosted or destroyed. Through the use of Photoshop a picture can be altered to get the perfect figure, skin, and hair, but when is the line drawn, when has it gone too far. Hailey Magee takes a stand when it comes to the ethics behind Photoshop in the world of beauty, “In this “Ethical Inquiry” we explore the ethics of digitally altering photos of individuals so as to make the subjects appear “more beautiful” in alignment with cultural standards of beauty”. Shiela Reaves, Jacqueline Bush Hitchon, Sung–Yeon parks, and Gi Woong Yun agree with Hailey Magee in the discussion of photo manipulation in beauty and fashion. “This study is concerned with the moral dilemma that stems from the digital manipulation of magazine ads to render models thinner. Exposure to the “thin ideal” has been linked to such damaging psychological responses as body dissatisfaction, loss of self-esteem, and to eating disorders”. Women and men are constantly affected by exposure to models that achieve the unrealistic beauty outcome of the media. Using the theories of social comparison and cultivation/ media literacy we are able to explain why photo manipulation makes women take on the thin-ideal. In the media driven world photo manipulation has become an accepted practice since it increases sales and fulfils the “thin ideal”, but the emotional and physical damage it has on women is catastrophic.
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
In this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.
...r young, impressionable mind will have been exposed to more than 77,000 advertisements, according to an international study. Last week, it confirmed the link between the images of female perfection that dominate the media and increasing cases of low self-esteem among young women..” (Shields,2007). The propaganda techniques such as liking, sex appeal, and celebrity endorsements are used in advertisements constantly. Commercials on television, billboards, magazines, and various other advertisement types are everywhere you look in America, and sadly it has become very important for women of all ages to try to be perfect. We come into contact with these messages every day, and the beauty industry is getting bigger and bigger. Propaganda has molded our worldly perception of beauty and will only continue to hurt us and gain from our lack of self-esteem if we allow it to.
Advertisements are pieces of art or literary work that are meant to make the viewer or reader associate to the activity or product represented on the advertisement. According to Kurtz and Dave (2010), in so doing, they aim at either increasing the demand of the product, to inform the consumer of the existence, or to differentiate that product from other existing one in the market. Therefore, the advertiser’s aim should at all times try as much as possible to stay relevant and to the point.
Advertising is an information source to inform people about the products and new prices of the company which can help them to make informed choices. More recently, huge amount of money has been spent on advertising throughout the world. Different types of advertisement such as television, radio, magazine, newspaper, the internet, billboards and posters can influence consumer’s behavior positively or negatively as there are different arguments and opinions. This essay will focus on the purpose of the advertisement for the company, the positive effects and negative effects of advertisement on consumer behavior.